Our Opinion: A proposal to save state’s capital plan

Friday

Jan 28, 2011 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2011 at 3:22 PM

To put it mildly, we have never been fans of video gambling outside of casinos. And when video gambling became an important funding leg for a $31 billion capital construction plan, our disdain increased exponentially.

To put it mildly, we have never been fans of video gambling outside of casinos. And when video gambling became an important funding leg for a $31 billion capital construction plan, our disdain increased exponentially.

“(Gov. Pat) Quinn should veto any capital plan sent to him that contains video poker. It’s just another attempt to get something for nothing and weasel out of making tough decisions,” we wrote on May 22, 2009.

Well, Quinn got just such a capital plan, and signed it in July 2009. Almost instantly, counties and municipalities around the state began voting on video poker with their feet: They ran from this socially irresponsible regulatory nightmare as fast as they could. There now are 79 jurisdictions in Illinois — 75 municipalities, four counties — that have said, “No, thanks,” to video gambling in bars and other non-casino locations, according to the Illinois Church Action on Alcohol & Addiction Problems.

“They say desperate times lead to desperate measures, and we saw no better indication of the state’s desperation to pass a capital construction plan than the inclusion of legalized video gambling as a funding source,” read our editorial of Aug. 6, 2009.

As it turns out, we were looking at the small picture in aiming our darts solely at the video gambling component of the capital funding bill. A panel of the Illinois Appellate Court in Cook County on Tuesday invalidated the entire bill, ruling that the General Assembly had packed too many unrelated parts into it, thus violating the Illinois Constitution’s rule that bills deal with a single subject.

The bill “began as a five-page bill addressing the narrow subject of amending the Illinois estate and generation-skipping transfer tax. As enacted on July 13, 2009, Public Act 96-34 grew to 280 pages covering a variety of subjects,” wrote Appellate Judge Lawrence O’Gara in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel.

Unless the Illinois Supreme Court swiftly reverses this ruling or the legislature passes all the parts as individual bills, this could leave the state in quite a fix. Projects paid for by the Illinois Jobs Now! capital plan already are under way. (Here in Springfield, $4 million of the $16 million cost of an improvement project for the Prairie Capital Convention Center is coming from the capital plan.)

But the General Assembly will be in an especially tough spot if it has to pass all the funding sources one-by-one.

The invalidated bill was rammed through the legislature as a sort of bipartisan Hail Mary pass by lawmakers desperate to enact the first major capital construction plan in a decade. It was only after it passed and was signed by Quinn that local governments began voicing their discontent about the video gambling part.

Passing all the pieces individually should be a slam dunk for four of the five funding sources: privatizing the state lottery ($150 million), imposing sales tax on candy, noncarbonated beverages and beauty products ($150 million), raising vehicle fees ($331 million) and increasing the tax on alcohol ($114 million). It was the alcohol portion that cause the lawsuit, which was brought by Rocky Wirtz, owner of the Chicago Blackhawks and operator of a liquor distributing empire.

However, video gambling was the biggest source of funding by far at $375 million. With so many communities in Illinois so vocally against it, we don’t see how this will pass on its own. For that matter, with so many communities opting out, we don’t see how this will raise nearly as much money as projected.

That’s why we offer this suggestion to the General Assembly: Rather than waiting for a Supreme Court decision, call these bills separately when you return to Springfield next week.

But take video poker out of the formula and revive the $1-a-pack cigarette tax you left on the table last session. That was estimated to bring in $377 million. Communities can’t opt out of that one. Nor will we need a new army of enforcement personnel to make sure the state gets its cut, as we will when video poker machines arrive in hundreds of locations.

If the Supreme Court upholds the appellate decision and lawmakers dare deliver the crack cocaine of gambling to their constituents after a year-and-a-half of negative reaction, it would be a display of cynicism of Blagojevichian proportions.

Swapping a horrible gambling expansion for a cigarette tax that won’t even put Illinois in the Top 10 of state tobacco taxes — and will reduce smoking in the process — sounds like a pretty good deal to us.

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